1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a wafer container, and more particularly, to a wafer container with its interior being disposed with an elasticity module that provides elastic buffering mechanism to protect the wafers from being damaged due to excessive vibration in the transferring process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The semiconductor wafers need to be transferred to different work stations to go through various processes in required equipments. In order to facilitate the transferring of wafers and to prevent the pollution of wafers from occurring during transferring process, a sealed container is provided for the automatic transferring process. Referring to FIG. 1, which is a view of wafer container of the prior art. The wafer container includes a container body 10 and a door 20. The container body 10 is disposed with a plurality of slots 11 for horizontally supporting a plurality of wafers (not shown in Figure), and an opening 12 is located on a sidewall of the container body 10 for exporting and importing the wafers. The door 20 further includes an outer surface 21 and an inner surface 22, wherein the door 20 is joined with the opening 12 of the container body 10 via the inner surface 22 to protect the plurality of wafers within the container body 10. Furthermore, at least one latch hole 23 is disposed on the outer surface 21 of the door 20 for opening or closing the wafer container. In the wafer container described above, the wafers are horizontally placed in the container body 10, and thus, a wafer restraint component is needed in the wafer container to prevent wafers from displacing or moving toward the opening 12 of container body 10 during the wafer transferring process due to vibration.
Referring to FIG. 2A, which is a view of the door of a wafer container disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,267,245. As shown in FIG. 2B, the inner surface 22 of the door 20 is disposed with a recess 28, in which wafer restraint modules 40 are further disposed. The wafer restraint modules 40 are composed of a plurality of elasticity portions 40, and two rows of wafer contact portions 52/54 are oppositely disposed on two sides of each wafer restraint module 40, as shown in FIG. 2C; the two rows of wafer contact portions 52/54 are alternatively arranged, and bevel structures 53/55 are formed on each of the wafer contact portions 52/54. Moreover, referring to FIG. 2A, wafer contact portions 120 are disposed on the inner wall of the rear end of the container body 10 opposite to the opening, and referring also to FIG. 2D, two rows of bevel structures 131/133 are formed on each of the wafer contact portions 120. Apparently, the bevel structures 53/55 formed on the wafer contact portions 52/54 and the bevel structures 131/133 formed on the wafer contact portions 120 are alternatively arranged. Therefore, when the door 20 closes the container body 10, the plurality of wafers in the container body 10 will be fixed in bevel structures 53/55 and bevel structures 131/133. Thus, by fastening the wafers with the design of wafer contact portions 52/54 and wafer contact portions 120, the wafers can be prevented from displacing or moving toward the opening of container body during the wafer transferring process due to vibration.
Apparently, the structure of wafer contact portions used in the prior art for fastening the wafers is of higher hardness, and therefore the wafers may crack if there is excessive vibration during the wafer transferring process; more particularly, if the wafers placed in the wafer container are 12″ wafers or 18″ wafers, the problem of wafer cracking caused by vibration will be even more serious.